Had a 3 day weekend for the first time in a while for the holiday. Spent Sunday over at Larry's house taking care of some odds and ends. First off was addressing the ground that backed off a couple of weeks ago. I had the sucker tight and on my way home from work with the truck last week had it shut down at 65mph on the highway in the dark. Lucky for me there was a scenic overlook pullout just ahead and I coasted in. Crawled up to reach back to the ground on the back of the head and while the bolt was snug the ring terminal was loose. I hooked up my temporary ground and drove home. It got tightened the next day at my place but Larry and I decided we needed to do something about it. Either the bolt is too long and bottoming out before it's clamping the ground tight or it's not seating on the ring terminal quite right. The fix was to find a stud to install into the head and get the stud in tight and then the nut on the other end just needs to clamp the ring terminal and not have to hold the bolt into the head.
Next on the list was to address the leaky front output on the t-case and the wiped bushing on the rear tail shaft housing. Pretty simple to pull both shafts, Larry popped the front seal out and installed the new one. Odd thing is, that seal was brand new out of the reseal kit from ORD when he tore my 241 apart to install the 32 spline input. He's noticed each one he's done has had the same front seal leak, his in the Suburban and our buddy Andy's 208 in his suburban. I took the old rear housing off and swapped in the one Larry just took off his 241 to install the SYE on his Sub. He even caught me in action torquing the housing back on.
The park brake was another task to tackle. Since I switched the front cable to the early design to match my brake cables on the axle we needed to mock up the intermediate cable. We saved all the parts from my '75 including the intermediate cable. I thought we could use it here, but the cable itself is way too long. We set a couple of small c-clamps to act as the cable hangers and connected it to the front cable and measured for length. 66 1/2" is the length we measured. Nothing in the squarebody realm is that short. I almost forgot to mention the trick little item Larry had found to provide a mount point for the rear of the front cable. We had a hole in the frame that was perfect, but if we mounted it there it would be poking out perpendicular to the frame and pointing right at the trans. Larry had found a guy making adapter brackets that would normally be used to use the newer style cables on the old style backing plates. I neglected to get a pic of it, but it's basically a short section of tube mounted to a flat plate at an angle. We mounted to the frame where the tube lined up with the hole and it allowed the cable to come through at the right angle and still put a clip on the end of the housing to lock it in. It put the cable aimed right at where the intermediate cable will be. I spent last night surfing the Dorman parts catalog online and found a intermediate cable from a '75-'79 Nova, Omega, Ventrua or Apollo. It's 66 inches on the nose. $12 later from Amazon and it's on the way.
The big chunk of the day was spent on the rear springs. Between the lean and the sag under a full load for a trip we needed to adjust the rear spring pack. Larry had a couple of old springs stashed away for plucking leafs out at a later date. We drug them out for disassembly. Larry's monster air bumper jack was put to work lifting the rear with the axle on stands already.
That jack is the cat's ass for sure. Super handy.
The driver side spring gave us no issue at the spring eye bolts and came right out.
Larry got going on cutting x's into the rivets in prep for air hammer surgery.
The first Frankenstein pack. Three leaves were installed.
We went ahead and installed it back on the driver's side and quickly realized the u-bolts we had were now at least an inch short. We only had about a half of the nut's worth of thread engagement. We didn't think to plan ahead on that. We thought there was enough length. Nope. So we decided to attack the passenger side to at least get the spring set up. That's when we hit the wall. You know you are always one or two stuck bolts away from an easy job turning into a nightmare. Yep, the front spring eye bolt was seized in the bushing sleeve. Even me trying to break it free with both of my legs pushing on a long breaker bar couldn't budge it. Same on the rear spring eye bolt. Stuck. Larry handed me the Sawzall and I proceeded to strip the teeth off of three blades over the course of 45 minutes. Made little to no progress. Time to get aggressive. Out comes the die grinder with a 4" cut off wheel. Safety glasses and a face shield came with it. 10 minutes later and I had cut the bolt enough what little spring tension was on it caused the head of the bolt pop off the frame with some velocity, where it tagged a finger on my left hand right on a knuckle. Ouch. We stopped for the night at that point.
Larry took over this morning cutting the rear bolt out.
He also ran into town to get some longer u-bolts bent up and new spring bolts since we had to hack them out of the truck. But he got it. Frankenstein pack #2 is ready for bushing removal.
$100 worth of freshly bent u-bolts and grade 8 bolts from the farm store.
One bushing in. One to go.
Should be ready for our annual New Years' snow run. The Target zone is supposed to be getting 12-24" on top of what they already had up there.
